The very next morning after we came home from hosting the Bingham reunion, Hazel took an early flight out to Sitka. She went out for two weeks on her own to work for our friends Andy and Bre Nye. She worked at the dock selling their tours to cruise ship tourists, and when she wasn't busy doing that, she nannied their five kids, ages 11 and under. We got fun reports from her every night. She absolutely loved the sales and felt that was a good fit for her talents. She had dramatic ups and downs with the kids. She didn't like that they were constantly near her, looking over her shoulder to watch what she was doing, touching her, even barging into the bathroom wanting to be near her. She did love how darling they were and bonded especially with the three-year-old and shared lots of funny stories about them. She was definitely having a pseudo-young mom experience!
We stayed busy while she was gone. We bought a new kitchen table. I'm so excited about it! Todd and I were gifted our big oak table by a friend I taught school with and it's so functional we could never get rid of it, but it was not beautiful and always stood out like a sore thumb in our home. After buying our cabin, I wanted to move the oak table up there, but it took us a long time to find another table for our home that was both functional and beautiful.
We also bought a new-to-us piano. Jack's piano teacher Beth strongly recommended we upgrade to an acoustic piano so Jack could continue to grow in his skills, especially with dynamics. We did some research and found a beautiful, lightly-used Yamaha U1 for sale. Jack is over the moon, and Gemma seems to enjoy playing on it as well. Jack has been dusting it weekly and enjoys taking the front off to study the hammers.
Livermore City hasn't done 4th of July fireworks for the last two years. I'm so sad to think they might not come back. We thought about going to Tracy again like we did last year, but did some research and decided to try watching in San Francisco. We combined it with an outing to Alcatraz, which Jack.has wanted to visit for several years, and made it a day in the city.
I have mixed feelings after our tour. I felt like the prisoners were glorified, like they were the heroes in the story. I found their lives interesting on my own, but looking through a mother's lens, I didn't like that messaging for my kids. There was a lot to read about America's prison system and the problems it has, and I do support a lot of those ideas. It makes me sad the cycle we take of not fixing the systemic problems that lead people to make choices that land them in prison - often generationally.
We booked a driver-less car to take us to a ramen restaurant for dinner. They're all over the city. It was a freaky feeling to be inside it. None of us liked it that much. It's so risky!
The fireworks show was excellent, but the traffic to get home afterward was atrocious. San Francisco will not become our annual 4th of July tradition.
Jack played one of his songs for the Certificate of Merit recital. Todd, Gemma, and I all came to San Jose to support him.
I got my first ever ticket last month - for speeding on our way home from the cabin. I have been appropriately chastised. I have been super careful about my speed ever since, to Hazel's dismay. I also spent a day taking online traffic school to keep the mark off my record.
Sometimes Ginger wakes me up in the morning by meowing at my open window. That is something I only experience in summer, when I sleep later and with my window open. I do not like it.
Two weeks in, the rest of us flew out to Sitka and reunited with Hazel. We didn't go last summer, so everyone was especially nostalgic to be back. It was rainy our first day there, but otherwise, we experienced the best weather possible - sunny and near 60 every day. It was magnificent!
We ate at the Mean Queen, per tradition, but were not impressed. Service is always slow, but it was more so than ever before, and when the pizza arrived, it wasn't tasty enough to make up for it. I don't know, the Mean Queen may be dead to me. This is the only Sitka restaurant we have ever eaten at twice - none of the food has been good enough to not just cook for ourselves at the cabin, and we're always on the go with a picnic lunch during the day.
The kids were thrilled to be reunited. Everyone was extra giggly and smily.
Todd and I kayaked around the island Sunday afternoon. We picked a good time to do it. The water was smooth and it wasn't windy. It was beautiful and enjoyable. We sent Gemma and Jack out another day and they had the opposite experience. Todd eventually went out in the boat to rescue them - they were having a hard time paddling back to the dock. Lesson learned: weather conditions matter a great deal.
Todd and the kids jumped off the dock - multiple times. Gemma kept running back for more, that crazy cat. She said it's the coldest the first time, and after that it's not so bad.
We had Andy and his family over to the cabin for a BBQ Sunday night. We got to hear all about Hazel's adventures from their point of view and see the kids in real life. We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset that night and clear views of the volcano, Mount Edgecumbe, which we hiked the next day ...
So, the volcano hike. I wanted to try something we hadn't done before! The hike is long and hard - seven miles up, seven miles down, so we''ve always talked about doing it when Gemma was old enough to handle it. We boated out to the island the volcano is on, and there was already a boat on the buoy, so we used the anchor. Gemma ferried us from the boat to the island in the two-person kayak.
The first four miles were a relatively unremarkable hike. The ground was quite wet in some spots, and I was so grateful for my wool socks when I discovered that my hiking boots are definitely not waterproof. The views were ... fine... but definitely not as pretty as the rainforest-y landscape we generally hike through in Sitka.
There was a shanty you could rent from the forest service halfway through the hike that we stopped at for a snack break. There was a net you could use to hoist your food up away from the bears. The kids had fun hoisting Gemma and Jack in it instead.
The views did get better in the second half of the hike, but that's because we started taking on some crazy elevation gain. The total hike went from sea level to 3000 feet, and the longer we'd been hiking, the steeper the climb got.
Words can't really describe it, and pictures don't do it justice. It was, quite frankly, ridiculous. The final half mile was pure torture. There were posts in the ground, and every time you came to one, there were four more ahead. Never three. In total there were probably over 20, but you could only see four at a time because of the sheer height of the climb.
Add to this that most of the ground was covered in loose volcanic rock. Incredibly, the kids climbed it almost direct, but there was no way I could do that. Todd was so patient and stuck with me, zigzagging back and forth and turning our quarter mile into probably a mile and a half. I wanted to quit so bad, mostly because I was so afraid of going back down.
I am not kidding you, I sat down to rest my shaky jello legs and I prayed. I was given a reminder of how God helps me through hard things, and I asked for that help to finish this hike. Then I stood up and kept going.
I saw this cairn and thought it was the finish. It gave me the juice to keep going. I was so mad when I got to it and saw another cairn ahead. This hike never ends!
We literally walked through clouds and came out above them.
Looking at the pictures, it was pretty stunning up there, but I promise you I. ddi not notice that while I was there. I was just grateful for the reprieve and so scared to go back down.
I was not the only one who thought this hike was torture. We all peed on the cairn to express our disgust.
And yes, the walk down was horrible, at least for me. My knees hurt, my shins hurt, my feet hurt. I had hiking poles, thankfully, but I had to go so slowly and I cried a little bit. I felt mad at my body and humiliated that Todd and the kids were so much more agile than me.
There was a stretch of snow that they all slid down. I stayed away and just plodded away as directly down as I could manage.
Pictures, they just don't capture it. This hike was crazy steep.
About halfway down, Todd shared with me that he was worried he hadn't let out enough line on the anchor to make up for the rising tide. He was worried the boat might not be there when we got to the bottom and asked me to go as fast as I could. I prayed hard for help, then picked up my pace and pushed through my pain.
We all acknowledged we were witnessing a tender mercy from God when we got to the beach and saw that yes, the anchor line had been insufficient, and yes, the boat had drifted, but it had been caught on a small wall of reef instead of floating far away into the open ocean. We could still reach it with the kayak, and the boat only sustained a small bit of damage. It was a flat-out miracle.
Todd claimed the hike was worth it and he would do it again, but he'd be hard-pressed to get any of the kids to join him, and I definitely never will.
We did see a whale on the ride back, though!
And never has the sight of Tom's cabin been sweeter.
We basically took the next day off. Everybody's body hurt too much to want to go on another hike. We played games at the cabin and tooled around town a little bit. It was definitely a recovery day.
The day after that we did our favorite hike, Salmon Lake. Gemma was our kayak ferry paddler again.
Everyone kept talking about how beautiful the hike is and how much better we liked it than Mount Edgecumbe. When we came to the lake, we had our picnic lunch and stayed a long time. Todd told a Jeffery story like old times.
We saw bear poop on our trail, but the kids are our best bear deterrent - they're so loud!
Another day we strolled around the Totem Pole park. Low-key.
The kids picked berries and Jack made a pie with them. It was fine, but we all decided we'd rather have eaten the berries on their own.
We played lots of Chicken Foot and Hide-and-Seek.
Gemma stepped it up and became one of the people who hops out to help tie and untie the boat to the dock. She seemed to really enjoy the responsibility. All three kids took turns driving the boat this year.
Our last full day we hiked to Beaver Lake.
We saw bear poop on this trail, too!
I like this trail because there's a big waterfall near the lake, and you see smaller waterfalls and streams from it almost the whole way along. It's extra beautiful to hike near water.
Todd decided he wanted to go off-trail and try to get to the main waterfall. We were bushwacking through berry bushes and murky ground. I was so uncomfortable and afraid a bear was going to attack us. I couldn't handle it, but no one else wanted to go back, so I returned on my own with my Taylor Swift playlist playing as loud as my phone would go. I sat anxiously waiting until they all got back. I hated it so much.
My favorite part about Beaver Lake is the section of trail where we walk on stones along the water. It's so picturesque.
Out of order, but here's some Alaska pictures from Todd's phone. Gemma wore this xxxl rain jacket day one instead of the one she packed that she is growing out of.
We got to church early and took some pictures of the beautiful cedarwoood building.
Here's the kids and Todd, triumphantly at the waterfall, not being devoured by bears.
Our last morning, before going to the airport, we drove up Harbor Mountain and enjoyed the views.
We saw sunset from the airplane on the flight home! It was so cool!
We got home Friday night and left home again Sunday morning, this time driving to Utah. Hazel and her friend Nelly were attending BYU volleyball camp. It was so nice to have Nelly in the car - he kept Hazel entertained and all the kids stayed happy. We spent a couple nights at Chris and Jodi's house.
Monday, after dropping Hazel and Nelly off at BYU, Gemma, Jack and I met up with a bunch of Bonners - Grammie and Poppa, Luna, Missy, Carli, Kelsi, David, Kollyn, Julena, and Sophie - and floated the Provo River. I loved being so close to the mountains.
Tuesday, Gemma, Jack, and I did a temple tour. We made back to back to back appointments and did baptisms at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, the Jordan River Temple, and the Provo City Center Temple. Jack told me he'd been worried he would get tired of it, but he actually found it to be a really good experience. We all enjoyed seeing how different each temple was, and all voted on the Provo City Center as our favorite. It was so beautiful!
At Jack's request, we went to a movie theater to watch Jurassic World: Rebirth. It was so fun to see in the theater! The kids thought it was so funny every time I gasped or reacted in any way.
We stayed at Missy's the next two nights. We picked raspberries at a nearby patch and visited Aunt Kaye at an assisted living home, but otherwise, just chilled at Missy's villa. The kids loved swimming in the pool - but Jack didn't wear sunscreen and got a terrible burn. He also swallowed a lot of salt water and had an irritated throat and chest for a couple of days.
Out of order - here's my Provo River pictures!
We went and watched Hazel play tournament games her last afternoon of camp. Jack and Gemma got to score keep a couple and loved it when the score was 6-7.
We got ice cream every day in Utah and did some serious taste-testing. My favorites were the college creameries at BYU and Utah State.
We were there over Pioneer Day, so we got to watch fireworks again! We went with Mom and Scott's family, because we went up to Smithfield for our last couple of nights after volleyball camp ended.
Julena gave us a tour of Utah State, where she teaches Leadership in the Business department. I think it was positive for Hazel. She dreams of BYU but wants a smaller campus.
We spent several hours visiting Grandma Holley, who has just moved into the assisted living home in Smithfield. It was hard to compare her with last summer. She can't hear very well and it was very difficult to have a conversation with her. I love her so much. It was very hard to leave her.
Back in California, Gemma spent a day at Santa Cruz beach boardwalk with Lia and Lydia for Lia's birthday celebration.
Hazel attempted to sew herself a prom dress - with interesting results! We all laughed at her.
Ginger caught ... a squirrel!
Todd took a boat full of young men deep sea fishing. They had great success.
